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Saturday, December 27, 2014

Accessible searching

Google appears to have a tool or mini app for almost anything.
Here are some of their answers to making information available to the greatest number of people.

(look at 1-800-GOOG-411)

Web Search:

Result pages include headers to delineate logical sections.

Accessible Search:
Promotes results that are accessible.

Book Search:

Full-text access to public-domain works.

Gmail:

A simple yet functional HTML mode that works well with screen readers.

Gmail Mobile:
A lightweight user interface that is also speech-friendly.

Google Maps:
Easy-to-use textual directions.

Calendar:

A functional, yet speech-friendly user interface.

Audio Captchas:

All services that use Google Accounts provide an audio alternative for the visual challenge-response tests that are used to distinguish humans from machines.

Mobile Transcoder:

A mobile lens for viewing the web that produces accessible views.

Google Video:

Allows uploaded videos to contain captions/subtitles in multiple languages for viewers who are hearing-impaired or unfamiliar with the original language.

Google Talk:

IM clients inside a web browser can pose accessibility challenges, but the use of the open Jabber API means that Google users can choose from a variety of Jabber clients, many of which work well with adaptive technologies.

1-800-GOOG-411:

Here's an exception to the rule that we deliver most things through a web browser. Our experimental Voice Local Search service lets anyone who can speak into a phone search for a local business by name or category; get connected to the business free of charge; get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone. (Just say "text message".)

Monday, December 22, 2014

Make it easy

"Accessibility, the design of HTML documents for accessibility by people with disabilities, is such an important aspect of the Internet today that the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has adopted a set of guidelines for designing accessible Web sites. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) closely follow Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act.

For some Web sites, adherence to the WCAG is not optional; it is a necessity. Expression Web/FrontPage 2003 has tools for evaluating the accessibility of an entire Web site, identifying elements that violate the guidelines, and finding ways to correct the violations. The accessibility checker provides all of this functionality in a single dialog box.

To access the accessibility checker on the Tools menu click Accessibility (Accessibility Reports).

You can use the accessibility checker to check a single page or an entire Web site. The accessibility checker checks for varying levels of accessibility and specifically for adherence to Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act. You can check for errors or warnings, and you can add a manual checklist."

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Before or after

You can put a break on a web page like you can in a document.
A Cascading Style Sheet makes it simple

"The stub-ends left when paragraphs end on the first line of a page are called widows. They have a past but not a future, and they look foreshortened and forlorn."

Orphans are parts of a paragraph that begin on the previous page. An orphan has a future, but no past.

The only paging properties supported by Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3 and Firefox 2 are page-break-before and page-break-after.
The page-break-before and page-break-after properties enable you to say that a page break should occur before or after the specified element. The following example starts a new page every time an h1 heading is encountered and after every .section block.